The Movie:

The classic German documentary Triumph of the Will seems to be the ultimate litmus test on admiring a film despite the terrible, reprehensible message it puts forth. When Leni Riefenstahl's Nazi-glorifying film was released in 1935, the rest of Europe took notice of Adolf Hitler's rapid ascension to power. As straight-up propaganda, it still impresses as a vulgar, at times beautiful document of arrogance at its most monumental. Synapse's Blu-ray edition boasts a crystalline picture for this landmark of the documentarian's art.

Triumph of the Will captures the Nazis' self-exaltation during the Nuremberg rallies, a celebration the Party held more or less annually between 1923 and 1938. Riefenstahl's film of the sixth rally, from 1934, represents the only time these rallies were recorded for posterity in a comprehensive way. Like most propaganda, the film doesn't shy aw...Read the entire review

*Not your usual Savant review. -- Caution, unrated but commonly equivalent of XXX Adult*

As a student in the 1970s I worked as an usher at a couple of FILMEX exhibitions at Grauman's Chinese. I then volunteered to work in the film prep room for either the 1975 or 1976 FILMEX gala at the now-gone Plitt Century Plaza theaters. I heard that press screenings for some of the films were going to be held not far from my house, in an art center annex of the Frank Lloyd Wright Hollyhock House, up on Vermont and Sunset. Editor Steve Nielson and I wandered up there, and drifted into about an hour's worth of the weirdest thing we'd ever seen. Were we in the wrong place? The show being screened was a 16mm B&W porn epic, only screamingly funny. The thing wasas hard-core as anything we'd seen, so profane that we e...Read the entire review

In 10 Words or Less
Before MST3K, it was just a bad movie

Reviewer's Bias*
Loves: MST3K, How Did This Get Made?, cult movies
Likes: Quality clean-ups
Dislikes: Seeing kids or animals in peril
Hates: wasted money

The Movie
Numerous movies are known to the general populace only because the folks at Best Brains felt them worthy of targeting as part of Mystery Science Theater 3000, the much-beloved TV show that made fun of bad movies via clever commentary. Movies like Laserblast, The Beatniks or Santa Claus Conquers the Martians. But none owe their continued relevance to MST3K as much as Manos: The Hands of Fate, a shoddily-made attempt at a ho...Read the entire review

The opening shot is of a spaceship soaring through the heavens. You get a dead alien and a mosquito the size of a Great Dane before the counter has even ticked to the three minute mark. Ron Asheton from The Stooges scores second billing. Gunnar Hansen -- the one, true Leatherface! -- picks up a chainsaw for the first time in decades to carve his way through a legion of rubber skeeters. These monstrous bloodsuckers are brought to life through puppetry, stop-motion animation, a little 2D animation, and...well, pretty much every pre-CGI technique you can rattle off. It's co-written and directed by a guy whose special effects credits include Evil Dead II and Army of Darkness, and that Renaissance Pictures DNA is felt in all the whip pans and the mosquito's-eye-view camerawork tearing through the woods. Mosquito is a goopy, gruesome, Ultraslime-slathered love letter to giant bug m...Read the entire review

When it comes to sequels, there are an infinite number of ways to live up to the law of diminishing returns, but there may be only one unbreakable rule that every sequel can stick by: don't do the same things over again. Sure, you want to deliver a similar experience to the original, because people tend to want to see the same characters, the same world, or a related premise, but once you've got that out of the way, be sure to come up with some wild, fresh ideas to keep the audience guessing. Even a film like Evil Dead II, widely referred to by fans as a remake of The Evil Dead, covers mostly new ground: Ash goes insane, fights his own hand, becomes possessed, and eventually travels through time. I bring this up because Evil Dead II is a film that comes to mind when watching Demons 2...and not in a good way.

It's a little vague, but post-viewing internet r...Read the entire review

There are countless reasons for film fans to watch older movies, but chief among them is to see what's changed about the approach to films over time. Each generation of film has its own trends and tropes, and watching a movie made decades ago often helps clarify what it is that's gotten better or worse as the times have changed. Although it's kind of embarrassing to think of Demons as an "older" movie (I implore anyone who likes film to watch more movies made before 1970), it's no exception. Modern screenwriters and directors are obsessed with "world-building", insistently giving every concept and character an elaborate backstory. It's a tiring trend, one that shaves away the concept of magic and fantasy, especially as it grows in scope. Demons, directed by Mario Bava's son Lamberto and produced by Dario Argento, is a wonderful example of how little of that information is necessary fo...Read the entire review

Sometimes a simple idea produced on a low budget can make a big impact. It doesn't always take Hollywood scale in order to create a movie people want to see, a story worth watching, or a script worth its weight. Worm is an example of bare-bones film-making that succeeds without many definable characteristics going for it. No big stars, no great effects, a simple set, a basic plot. But combine a good director with one strong actor in a film that's written & edited well and you don't really need much else. Perhaps the low budget of the movie will limit its accessibility, but the lucky few who stumble across it will get a show worth e...Read the entire review

THE FILM:

Paul Lynch's Prom Night is just one of the many slashers released in the wake of Halloween. It pales in comparison, but does feature that film's star: Jamie Lee Curtis. What Prom Night lacks in tension and technique it partially makes up for in glittery, last-days-of-disco spirit. Why else would Curtis and co-star Casey Stevens have a minutes-long dance number in the middle of the film? The ...Read the entire review

It's hardly just another movie. Parts like the leading role of Audra come around once in a lifetime, and that's if you're lucky. Samantha Sherwood (Samantha Eggar) fought like hell to get her hands on the film rights to the legendary play, and she's willing to go to whatever extreme lengths are necessary to see it done justice. Taking The Method to a whole other level, Sherwood pretends to be consumed by homicidal rage and has herself committed. It's the only way for her to truly inhabit the psychotic character of Audra...to give her the insight into what it's like to spend however many years locked away in an asylum. When Jonathan Stryker (John Vernon) -- her wildly eccentric and more than a little Kubrickian director -- first comes to visit, Sherwood looks back at him with a mischievous glint in her eye....Read the entire review

It's only a few seconds into Countess Dracula until a lifeless corpse is first encountered. This being a Hammer Films production and all, that probably ought to go without saying, but Count Nádasdy doesn't meet that kind ...Read the entire review

]]> DVD Video http://www.dvdtalk.comwww.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/62609 Fri, 21 Mar 2014 01:20:16 UTC Recommended

Director: David Francis, Mike Masters
Starring: David Francis, Mike Masters, Stephen Papadimitriou
Year: 2008

Zombies are popular subject matter for indie filmmakers. Why not, I guess. The horror genre as a whole is a medium that allows high entertainment for small amounts of money. Some fake blood, some screaming hotties, a shaky camera, boom. And zombies fit right into this formula; easy to produce, easy to enjoy. So I've seen a ton of low budget undead in my time as a film critic, some awful some pretty cool. But I've never seen a zombie/horror/post-apocalyptic movie quite like this one. Reel Zombies is in a category all its own; a mockumentary/comedy that uses the standard indie horror idea and adds a twist that sm...Read the entire review

]]> Blu-ray http://www.dvdtalk.comwww.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/61442 Tue, 13 Aug 2013 16:21:57 UTC Highly Recommended

"I've seen it all before. First of all, they start to argue with one another...y'know, a few 'piss off's and 'get stuffed's, and nobody really takes any notice. Then comes stage two, when all this 'camaraderie' and esprit bullshit just goes. Then

[click on the thumbnail to enlarge]

[c...Read the entire review ]]> Blu-ray http://www.dvdtalk.comwww.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/61351 Sat, 27 Jul 2013 13:53:16 UTC Highly Recommended Hands of the Ripper (1971) isn't on anyone's list of favorite Hammer horrors, but the film is far better-produced and more ambitious than most of the company's films of the 1970s, and it's certainly unusual, some accurately describing it as Hammer's Marnie (1964), referencing the similarly-plotted Alfred Hitchcock flop now somewhat better regarded today. Some of the advertising for Hands of the Ripper was highly misleading, suggesting star Eric Porter was portraying the infamous Jack the Ripper. In fact, he plays a Freud-influenced London doctor attempting to cure a psychologically scarred young woman who, as it happens, is the daughter of the Ripper, though neither realizes this for most of the film. The problem with the picture is conceptual rather than executional, which is above average for Hammer during this rapidly ebbing period. The plot requires an intelligent, moral ...Read the entire review ]]> Blu-ray http://www.dvdtalk.comwww.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/60780 Mon, 15 Jul 2013 19:47:18 UTC Highly Recommended The Incredible Melting Man comes out on Blu-ray in a couple of weeks, and for your $19.97, you get one (1) and only one incredible melting man. Street Trash will run you a few Read the entire review ]]> DVD Video http://www.dvdtalk.comwww.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/58418 Fri, 11 Jan 2013 12:53:27 UTC Rent It THE PROGRAM Initially airing from March through April of 1995, "Chiller" is a long forgotten, six episode British horror anthology series. Unlike "Tales from the Crypt" or "Tales from the Darkside," "Chiller" is a very straight-faced exercise in short form, supernatural storytelling. Covering topics ranging from your standard ghost story to a sinister small-town secret, "Chiller" is very much a slow-burn series that at a surface glance, has the visual look of your standard British drama. While decidedly not campy in production design, "Chiller" proves to be only a mildly effective (and that's debatable) entry in the genre, ultimately finding itself hamstrung by its own low-key approach to entertai...Read the entire review ]]> DVD Video http://www.dvdtalk.comwww.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/57429 Tue, 18 Dec 2012 12:34:51 UTC Recommended The Film: Somehow, and I'm not sure how, I managed to miss Basket Case 3: The Progeny. That in and of itself is bad enough. But that's not what is really bad. What is really bad is that I didn't even know there was a third film in director Frank Henenlotter's Basket Case series. I saw the first two films, and then this one slipped past me, unnoticed for more than twenty years. And that is just plain pathetic. Well, it may be more than two decades late, but at least I've finally seen the third go-round of the Bradley twins. Picking up where Basket Case 2 left off, BC3 finds Duane Bradley (Kevin Van Hentenryck) desperate to be rejoined with his deformed, murderous conjoined twin brother Belial. In BC2, Belial hooked up with the equally deformed freak Eve, for what could possibly be the most ridiculous sex scene in any horror movie. Well, in the aftermath of...Read the entire review ]]> DVD Video http://www.dvdtalk.comwww.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/58023 Wed, 21 Nov 2012 22:20:58 UTC Rent It In an uncommon move for a film shot long before the era of home video and DVD (it may be the first ever making-of documentary of an independent feature), filmmaker Roy Frumkes was allowed onto the set and into the editing bay of George A. Romero's landmark zombie film Dawn of the Dead, to interview the cast and crew about making a follow-up to the hugely successful Night of the Living Dead, and to discuss Romero's directorial style. The completed 83 minute feature, Document of the Dead, was released in 1983 to positive reviews, just a couple of years before Romero's third Dead film was made. Now, encouraged by other filmmakers like Eli Roth and with plenty of help from Romero himself, Frumkes has recut Document with another 20 minutes of footage from the sets of subsequent projects, including Two Evil Eyes, Land of the Dead and Diary of the Dead.<...Read the entire review ]]> DVD Video http://www.dvdtalk.comwww.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/56981 Wed, 10 Oct 2012 01:11:36 UTC Highly Recommended Perfect October viewing for those looking for some classic U.K. chills. Synapse Films has released The Complete Hammer House of Horror, a five-disc, thirteen-episode collection of the 1980 television horror anthology. Featuring famous Hammer alumni from both in front of and behind the cameras (including Hammer horror icon Peter Cushing and Denholm Elliott, and directors Alan Gibson and Peter Sasdy among others), The Complete Hammer House of Horror's scary, gory, sometimes naughty, sometimes British black humor-amusing episodes are necessary viewing for any fan of 80s horror or the famous studio's theatrical releases. A couple of brief bonuses don't hurt these good-looking, uncut transfers. By 1979, the Hammer Films studio was in a lot of troubl...Read the entire review ]]> Blu-ray http://www.dvdtalk.comwww.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/56637 Mon, 20 Aug 2012 00:19:58 UTC Recommended I vomited at some point during the first couple reels of The Life and Death of a Porno Gang. Honestly, I'm kind of proud of that. Although I generally keep my distance from extreme cinema, I've still managed to endure the likes of Salò and Lars von Trier's Antichrist. Disgusted, repulsed, mortified...? Sure, sure, sure. Salò even [click on the thumbnail to enlarge] Read the entire review ]]> Blu-ray http://www.dvdtalk.comwww.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/55947 Mon, 23 Jul 2012 12:26:00 UTC Highly Recommended Made during a particularly bleak period for Hammer Films, Twins of Evil (1972) is a pleasant surprise. While still exhibiting the same desperate components of the company's other horror films of the period - gratuitous nudity, an obviously low budget, and feeble attempts to create a new franchise/horror star - its screenplay is much more intriguing than most early '70s Hammers, the direction is lively, and it features one of actor Peter Cushing's best performances. Synapse Film's new Blu-ray will be the first time many will have had a chance to see it. Though previously available on DVD in the UK, this apparently marks its first home video appearance in America since a 1990 VHS release. The presentation is a major improvement over Synapse's flawed 2010 Blu-ray of another Hammer title, Vampire Circus (also 1972), and like that film it comes with a mountain of extra features. Included is...Read the entire review ]]> Blu-ray http://www.dvdtalk.comwww.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/56957 Fri, 06 Jul 2012 18:14:34 UTC Recommended When his remote-control lawnmower birthday gift accidentally slices and dices his spacey fiancee Elizabeth (Patty Mullen) at a birthday party, Jeffrey Franken (James Lorinz) is distraught. Unable to think straight without his better half (no matter how many times he scratches his brain with a power drill), he rigs up a garage full of equipment ready to harness the lightning provided by an impending storm, with the hopes of bringing her back from the dead. All he needs to complete the puzzle is a new body for his bride-to-be, so he throws on a cheap suit, borrows his mother's car, and begins cruising the city's seediest streets... Frankenhooker sounds like a hole-in-one. A cheap monster movie with the promise of nudity, ridiculous splatter effects, and an over-the-top sense of humor? Sign me up. Sadly, director/writer Frank Henenlotter never really captures the promise of the movie's premise, s...Read the entire review ]]> Blu-ray http://www.dvdtalk.comwww.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/55477 Sun, 17 Jun 2012 13:45:00 UTC Recommended "Let's kick some ass." That's preeeeeeeetty much the plot summary for Red Scorpion right there too. Red Scorpion, filmed after that one-two punch of Rocky IV and Masters of the Universe, stars Dolph Lundgren as Soviet Spetsnaz soldier Read the entire review ]]> Blu-ray http://www.dvdtalk.comwww.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/54921 Fri, 18 May 2012 20:37:18 UTC Highly Recommended THE MOVIE: Synapses Films' 42nd Street Forever DVD releases, which number a half dozen and counting, have become must-owns for film geeks. The collections, which the label began issuing in 2005, are a buffet of trailers from the so-called "grindhouse" era: the notorious, the long forgotten, and everything in between. Other, lesser labels have attempted to follow their lead with trailer compilations of their own, but no one does it quite as well as Synapse; their discs are howlingly entertaining and marvelously compiled, and feature about the best possible A/V quality for scraps of film as presumably neglected as these. 42nd Street Forever's inaugural foray into HD, simply subtitled Blu-Ray Edition, is comprised mostly of titles from the series' first two standard-def releases, 2005's Read the entire review ]]> Blu-ray http://www.dvdtalk.comwww.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/53816 Tue, 03 Apr 2012 19:49:39 UTC Highly Recommended Dateline! 1969. In this corner: a ragtag bunch of vets fresh off a particularly brutal tour of duty in Vietnam. In this corner: a small army of nutjobs in some sort of thrill kill cult, prone to [click on the thumbnail to enlarge] painting m...Read the entire review ]]> DVD Video http://www.dvdtalk.comwww.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/53122 Wed, 11 Jan 2012 00:19:09 UTC Rent It The Tagline: FOR THESE GIRLS, DEATH IS THE ONLY ESCAPE! The Movie: As part of its growing Asian Cult Cinema Collection line, Synapse Films has just released the tame (relative to its subgenre) 2005 J-Horror title Gurozuka directed by Yoichi Nishiyama. Anytime I review a foreign title without an English language dub (as Gurozuka's DVD is packaged), I feel obligated to start off by acknowledging that fact. Reading subtitles doesn't bother me, but I know many film enthusiasts who refuse to do so. If you fall into that camp, this first U.S. home video release of Gurozuka just is not f...Read the entire review ]]> Blu-ray http://www.dvdtalk.comwww.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/52698 Sun, 27 Nov 2011 15:39:35 UTC Highly Recommended If you're just looking for a quick, eight-word review, I could probably get away with leaving it at this: Intruder totally lives up to its cover art. Okay, you know how Joe Bob Briggs coined the phrase "Spam in a Cabin" to describe one of the most tried and true horror formulas of the 1980s? Y'know, a gaggle of horny twentysomethings trot off to some hopelessly out-of-the-way cabin to drink and screw, and with no chance of escape and no one to come to their rescue, they get slaughtered one by one? Anyway, Intruder sticks to that same basic story, only instead of Spam-in-a-cabin, it's more like Spam-in-a-supermarket. Wait, I need a better analogy. Anyway, Intruder is set at a floundering grocery store, and the night crew ha...Read the entire review ]]> DVD Video http://www.dvdtalk.comwww.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/51692 Fri, 07 Oct 2011 15:44:02 UTC Recommended South of Heaven is a film that really threw me for a loop. It's visually arresting, well-performed, stylishly directed, and often bizarrely dispairing, summoning in the viewer the same sense of hopelessness that the characters are feeling. It's a wonderful, incredibly original piece of filmmaking that never does what the viewer expects, all with the effect of making the viewer feel like shit. The plot revolves around two brothers, named Roy Coop (Adam Nee) and Dale Coop (Aaron Nee). When the movie begins, we're with Roy, who strides into his brother's curiously empty apartment, fresh off a stint in the Navy. His brother has been sending him a novel in letter form over the course of his tour of duty, and now that Roy is back, he's going to shape it into the Gre...Read the entire review ]]> Blu-ray http://www.dvdtalk.comwww.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/52160 Tue, 04 Oct 2011 20:41:57 UTC Highly Recommended "What began as a birthday barbeque ended in a bizarre tragedy in Ho-Ho-Kus, New Jersey today. It was this power mower that brought a quick end to the life of 21 year old bride-to-be Elizabeth Shelley. Like wood through a mulcher, the Read the entire review ]]>